heard?"

"I have heard that you have ways of making the worse appear the better
reason--that you flatter."

The glow deepened in her face and her eyes flashed.

"And," he went on, lightly, "why should not one try to make the world
pleasanter by making it more satisfied with itself? Isn't that the
part of a public benefactor?"

"You are laughing at me," she cried. "You--are--despising me."

"No, indeed," he answered, with real earnestness. "You misunderstand
me. Isn't it only fair to give back in pleasant speeches the
admiration and adulation that the world gives you? There would be a
certain dishonesty in taking all and giving nothing."

"You--you--are mocking me," she gasped, rising, as if to fly, and then
sinking back.

"No," he answered, "only I object to being mocked myself. I'd rather
not be included with all the others to be given pleasant words, as you
can so easily give them out of a large supply. I'd prefer to have you
think better of me than to believe that I am to be treated in that
way."

"Mr. Leeds, you are abominable and rude--and I cannot listen to you."

"I am sorry. Honestly, when you began to make such--civil speeches to
me I was disappointed. It was so exactly what I had been told to
expect."

Miriam bit her lips--and her hand trembled a little on the handle of
the sunshade.

"I may have lost my temper a little," he said, "which one should never
do--but I can't take anything back."

That afternoon Miss Whiting was strangely silent. Held at the opening
of the tent by her hostess, people passed before her unseen. What she
said she hardly knew. What her words meant she could not have told.
She was only aware that her voice sounded unnatural, and that her
laugh--when laugh she must--struck discordantly and strangely on her
ears. She felt that the time would never come when she could be
alone--to think.

II.

Mrs. Gunnison's dinners, like all else of the establishment, were
always large. The classic limits authoritatively imposed she would
have scorned--if she had ever heard of them. If she could have timed
it, the greater the number of minutes required by the procession to
the dining room in passing a given point, the better she would have
been satisfied. She only felt that she "entertained" when she beheld
serried ranks of guests stretching away from her on either hand.
Therefore, when Miriam turned and discovered Leeds at her right, they
found themselves in such semi-isolation as o